


The Other Colors

by crystalsexarch



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: ...oops..., Drabble Collection, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Size Difference, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23028379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: A collection of drabbles based on my original characters (and NPCs eventually?) that don't fit into any of my other published canons.Rating will change over time. Low pressure, just writing because I can. Table of contents eventually.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	1. Ayar in Limsa - G

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ayar. **General.** A stranger teaches a shopkeeper's little brothers a thing or two about swords.

There was a man Fanielle saw perhaps three, four times a week, sometimes all on the same day. Always bright, always alone, always looking at _everything_ , as though he had a mind to walk away with half of Hawkers’ Alley in his pocket. The strange part: Fanielle had never seen this man buy anything. A ruby-haired Miqo’te, his face was tanned, freckled, and full-cheeked—youthful. But his expression was old. As he tapped the trinkets of each and every booth, he kept the same weight in his eyes, even with his ears flicking to the rapid beat of Limsa Lominsa.

Fanielle, too, was keen on looking at everything. At 14 he was the eldest of his father’s sons and eager to shake off the foolish brand of youth. _Stay back_ he’d say to his brothers when Yellowjackets rushed through the market. _Let them pass. They’ve got work worth doing_. When the rascals drifted a bit too close to shifty-eyed Arcanists, he was quick to ask forgiveness. For one, his father would say, leaving a sour taste in the mouth of a mage was bad for business. And second—it simply wasn’t polite to knock a wooden sword into a man’s shins.

But that’s exactly what Fanielle’s brothers were doing, when the young Elezen pulled his eyes away from the gil in his customer’s hand to the opposite side of the corridor. And the man caught between their wooden blades was none other than that perpetual red-haired stranger.

“Oh! Pardon,” the Miqo’te said, shuffling back to accommodate the playful skirmish at his feet. Fanielle’s mouth hung open, but he stood and blinked until he felt the cool of gil in his palm.

“Something wrong, boy?” The customer, a bearded Roegadyn, said. “You’ve gone all pale.”

Fanielle straightened his back and scurried to the other side of the counter. “Pray forgive me!” he said, dropping the coins. “I must—I must attend to—Julien! Victoir! What do you think you’re doing?”

The boys kept about their fun, using the stranger strategically, as genuine combatants might use a pillar or a tree. The stranger kept his arms—and his tail—elevated, his eyes low. With horror, Fanielle watched the man’s lips quirk in displeasure. Fanielle couldn’t get to the other side quick enough, not without becoming the type of pushy passerby he hated the most.

“What indeed,” the Miqo’te said, crossing his arms.

Fanielle nearly tripped, avoiding one more pedestrian, but finally, finally he was just fulms away from those rambunctious boys, those embarrassing brothers of his. When he opened his mouth, he found the stranger had aught to say.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is the first either of you has ever borne a blade.”

It was perhaps the only collection of words that could have brought about armistice. Julien and Victoir looked dumbstruck.

The stranger put his hands on his hips and smiled. “You’ve hardly got the grip right. Let me show you.” Kneeling, he held his hand towards Julien, the youngest and smallest, but looked up at Fanielle. “If I may. ‘Tis a lesson that could prove useful someday.”

Fanielle tensed. “I—er—”

“It may temper their aim in the future, as well.”

Julien cocked his head at the stranger, and Victoir peaked up at his brother with high brows. Fanielle blinked, realizing this man was asking for his permission. To do what exactly, he wasn’t sure. But at least he wasn’t angry for having been used as an environmental hazard in his brothers’ little war. “C-certainly.”

“Excellent. May I?” Fire in his amber eyes, he gestured again with his open palm.

Julien dropped the wooden weapon blade first into his hand. “You’re gonna give it back, right?”

“Of course. If you prove yourself worthy.” The man flipped the weapon around so he was holding it the right way. “First of all--always bequeath weapons to your comrades hilt-first. This is a show of trust and respect.”

The boys blinked at him.

“Second--look at how you’ve got the blade gripped.” Holding out the sword, he pointed at his thumb with his free hand. “Have you ever used a hammer?”

“No.”

“I have.” The middle child spoke up. “With Pa.”

“Excellent.” He gestured back to the sword. His fingers curled around the hilt, thumb set firmly against his index finger. “This is a hammer grip. Very strong. It’ll be hard for anyone to disarm you if you hold tight. But consider another option.” He shifted his thumb so it ran parallel to the hilt. “ _Saber_ grip.”

Victoir shifted his own grip and cocked his head to the side.

“With saber grip, you’ve got quite a bit more range.” The man rose and assumed a martial stance, low to the ground. One arm behind his back, he extended the other and swung the sword with the music of a conductor. “More range means more distance for your opponent to close if they plan on striking you.”

Julien looked to Fanielle. “Can I try?”

The stranger spoke. “Of course. But heed one more lesson.” Kneeling once more, he set the tip of the wooden blade on the ground and ran his finger along the side. “Which side of this sword is sharp?”

“Neither,” Victoir said. “Because it’s wooden.”

“Fair. But were it steel--which side would you strike with?”

Victoir twisted his lips and flipped his sword around. “Well...this one, I guess.” He pointed to the outer edge of the curve.

“Precisely. It's a single-edged blade, So I’ll have none of this--” He stood and swung the blade back and forth, just above Julien’s head. “None of this hack and slash. With that kind of behavior you’ll dole out only bruises ever other strike. With a saber like this, you’ll need another way to make the most of your energy.” He resumed that martial stance and held the sword towards Victoir. “Now. Shall we?”

“Huh?”

“Can you strike me?”

Fanielle watched his brother’s face for signs of stress, but after considering the challenge, the boy’s eyes lit up. “Of course!” he said, launching forward.

Oh goodness. This stranger, Fanielle thought, was _just as bad as his brothers_.

It wasn’t a dance--not by a long shot. But the stranger entertained the boys with a mixture of encouragement and criticism. They took turns sparring and were quick to call each other out for lessons learned and forgotten in the heat of the match. Fanielle took time to eye his father’s booth from time to time, but he mostly watched the stunted battle unfold. Though the gazes of passersby were uncomfortable, and his father would certainly chastise him if he were to find out, the mystery eased the sting enough for him to keep his complaints to himself this time.

“Ahah!” The redhead danced back and held his arm out. “Aye, I’m a short man, but you’ll need to hold your weapon more carefully if you’re to reach me.”

“No fair!” Julien said.

“No fight is fair unless you _make_ it fair.” He closed his eyes in a laugh...but the laugh soon turned into a cough. His posture dropped and he covered his mouth with his hand.

Julien apparently saw this as his chance to attack. Before Fanielle could interject, the stranger was on his knees with a wooden sword bopped against his neck. “Julien. Wait,” the eldest said, too late.

“‘S fine.” The coughing continued, but the stranger held his hand up. It was a nasty cough. Painful. Dry. An older man’s cough. “Happens all the time.” He looked at his opponents and rocked back to a standing position, cheeks and forehead red. “I’m afraid I’m calling it for now, boys. Consider yourself the victors.”

“I won!”

“That’s right. You've bested me.” Turning the wooden sword to hold it by the blade, he offered it back to Victoir. “Color me impressed by your rapid progress. Your brothers are…” He coughed again into his arm. One eye squinted, he was addressing Fanielle. “Your brothers are bright.”

“Boys. Return to the booth.” They skittered off. The eldest softened his gaze and frowned. “Are you all right?”

“Quite.” He straightened his sleeves, his bangs, rolled his wrists about. “You take good care of them, don’t you?”

“Can I get you...water? Something?”

He flattened his palms and smiled, shaking his head. “I’m quite all right. Someone takes excellent care of me back home.”

 _Back home._ A traveller? “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking. Who are you?”

“Ah, well…” He rubbed his arm and smiled in a way that somehow reminded Fanielle of a sunset. “This is the part where I mysteriously disappear without answering, and you grow up wondering whether you secretly met someone very important.”

“Oh.” _Had he?_

But he wouldn’t get the chance to ask again. The stranger dusted off his tunic and turned towards the aetheryte. “I’m off, then. Mind their grips in the future, won’t you?”

“O-of course.”

After that day, Fanielle always looked for but never saw the stranger again.


	2. Ayar and Rei - E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ayar has a strange encounter with a man who doesn't have nearly as much experience as he does. **Explicit**.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted this to be sort of impressionistic so...it's not hugely long or anything. ~~But this Au Ra is~~

“Have you done this before?” Ayar cradled the Au Ra’s head and let himself be entered with a mighty sigh. This stranger was large. _Very_ large. But nothing he couldn’t handle.

Rei lowered his head so his horns just touched the Seeker’s chest. The sandy blond of his bangs swept forward and brushed at his partner’s scars, hid his blushing face. “...no…” the Au Ra said between breaths.

“No?” The smaller man pushed himself up on the mattress and set his fingers on Rei’s scaled chin, forced him to look up. “You’ve never...had sex?”

With trembling lips, he shook his head. Despite his size, his horns, his ample strength, he looked veritably terrified...and lusty. “N-never.”

“My good man!” There wasn’t much Ayar could do, as far as untangling himself, but he did his best to communicate the posture of someone happy to let his partner go, if need be. “I hope I haven’t pressured you.”

“No.” He looked to the side, towards a basket of apples sitting on the table of Ayar’s room at the inn. Soft candlelight danced upon their polish. “I wanted to…want to...”

“But we’ve only just met. Just kissed. I had no idea you…” Legs still spread, the Seeker eased back onto the mattress. “Don’t tell me you’d never kissed anyone either.”

He pursed his lips and looked straight down. Admission enough.

Ayar squinted and examined the Scholar once more. They had to have been the same age, or similar enough in time. A virgin of his years was not a mystery of itself; instead Ayar puzzled over this man’s decision to sleep with someone he’d only spent a night with, and a sober one at that. “Please do not feel obligated to...to do these things, if you’re intent on knowing me. I would know you how you want to be known.”

Rei lowered his head again and groaned, shifted forward, shifted deeper. “I...I want to.”

“You don’t have to.”

Purple eyes, half-lidded, glimmered with the slight tilt of his chin. “Want to finish.”

Ayar blinked and blushed. “Well...by all means.” He wrapped his hands around the Au Ra’s neck again and hinted him closer. “If you are certain. Kiss me.”

Rei whined into the kiss and pressed himself as far as he thought he could, flesh to flesh. He felt the Seeker’s back arching, the curve of his body beneath him--he felt his legs spreading farther to accommodate him--he felt so _much_. It was nothing like the tempered touch of his own hand. Keeping the kiss tight, he edged out deliberately...and instinctively brought himself back in. It was embarrassing how accidental the motion felt, how little control he had over his hips as the Seeker’s tightness drove him ever closer.

Ayar could hear the man’s limit approaching, could feel it in his hot breaths. Of course it wouldn't be long. That was no problem. He broke the kiss and willed his legs around his partner’s back as best he could. It wasn’t easy.

Rei whimpered. “I’m...going…”

“It’s fine,” Ayar said with the calm of a searing desert mirage. “Inside. Let me feel you.”

For perhaps ten seconds, Rei let himself move as harshly as his body told him to. And it was harsh. Whoever was trying to sleep in the next room over would hear the bed knocking against the wall, quite possibly the soulful song slipping from the Miqo’te’s smiling mouth. _I love you_ , Rei wanted to say. He knew it was lust. Affection? Mania. He knew it wasn’t love. Not yet. But he wanted to say it so badly the first two words nearly fell from his lips. He would apologize later. He would apologize even as he came, if he could.

Ayar gasped and arched his back even more, wrapped his tail around Rei’s wrist. When the Au Ra finally let go, he wasn’t entirely expecting it. The pleasure was too much for him to move as he spilled into the smaller man, but he kept his body tense until the last wave of pleasure had worked its way from his cock to the tip of his twitching tail.

The Miqo’te sighed a pretty sigh. “Oh my.”

Rei couldn’t look him in the eye. “Am I okay?”

He laughed and ran his knuckles against the man’s horns. “Are you okay? Well, that’s a question only you ought to answer.” Fresh sweat on his brow, he smiled and regarded the man for a few moments before closing his eyes. “Kiss me again, now. Kiss me different.”

“Different?”

“You’ll know it.”

Without pulling out, Rei eased forward and looked at that freckled face, as tricky and as peaceful as a sleeping coeurl. Feeling awkward, he minded his horns and planted a tiny kiss in the middle of his forehead. He tasted like salt. “Now what?”

“Now what indeed.” He opened one amber eye and lowered his eyebrows. “That question is for us to answer together.”


	3. Ayar Meets Rei - T

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A stranger attracts the attention of a tavern regular.

Truth is, Ayar had had a strange feeling about Rei. The first time he saw the Au Ra at the tavern, sipping warm tea to himself, one of those visions came over him. It only ever happened when he looked at someone special...though he was quick to admit he had _perhaps_ convinced himself that anyone who triggered a vision was remarkable in some aspect. A sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, the headache came and he leaned into a nearby chair to keep himself from drawing the wrong kind of attention.

“Something wrong with you, red?” A thick-lipped Hyuran woman hit Ayar with the question shortly after he snapped out of it. Someone he had spent time with. Someone he’d spent _time_ with, too, like most of those sitting around her. He’d been living in the Shroud for over a year now, and had made plenty of friends in his own way.

Ayar grinned and straightened his posture. “Not at all. You know very well I handle my drink like a champion.”

“Aye, and much more than that.” She whipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and set her tankard on the table. The bodies around her glowed with liquor-warmth and laughter.

Ayar smiled right back. “Now, now. How rude of you to make such bawdy implications in front of my new acquaintance.” Like a conductor, he swung his arm to point at the lone Au Ra, who promptly spat out his drink. So he _had_ been watching.

Confusion and fear occupied most of Rei’s head-space in those moments, but even as he tried to recover from having lost some of his tea, he couldn’t help but think about how the Miqo’te’s sleeves were far too large for him. As the redhead made his way over to the table, he watched the fabric overtake his fingertips and thought about whether he may have been wearing someone else’s shirt.

And then suddenly Ayar was sitting at Rei’s booth.

“Hi,” he said. His legs couldn’t reach the ground. “I’m Ayar. I can’t say I’ve seen you here before, but you seem important.”

Rei rubbed his hands together and looked down, smiling out of fear. Fight and flight arm wrestled in his chest. “Important?”

“That’s right. You seem like someone I ought to know. Have you any idea why?”

The hum of the tavern felt smaller. He straightened his back. He hated attention. Hated when eyes crawled all over his skin. He shouldn’t have been staring in the first place. Plenty of handsome people in the world, and he had to stare at the one man who brought a dozen gazes along with him. And then he’d gone and lost his drink...that certainly didn’t help. “No?”

Ayar cocked his pretty little head to the side. “No idea at all?”

“No??” _I have never ever, ever been so thankful that I chose to drink tea in lieu of something stiffer, thank the Dawn Father, thank the Kami, thank, anyone, everyone—_

“That’s a shame,” the Miqo’te said, the slits of his eyes growing wider as he leaned in with pouted lips. “I was hoping you’d give me a hint. That aside, are you feeling all right?”

Was he turning himself into stone? It wouldn’t have been the first time some kind of magic slipped out and caused problems. Nor was it the first time his tongue failed him. That happened every day. And uncomfortable as he was, he was ready to fail a little bit again instead of failing further.

The man cast a thumb over his shoulder, towards the other tavern patrons. “Are they making you nervous?”

The question felt genuine. Rei blinked twice.

“Don’t mind them. They think you’re going to reject my advances.”

Rei exhaled and watched his breath interact with the steam of his tea. “Advances.”

“But _I_ don’t think you’ll reject me. Nay.” He held his chin high and crossed his arms, looked at Rei with a sideways glance. “I think you’re going to show me the flowers in your satchel.”

Rei dropped his hand to the side, expecting to find the satchel missing. But it was there. So how had this stranger known? Had he stolen it, glanced inside, and put it back without attracting attention? Was he some kind of pickpocket? A thief? A psychic?

Ayar liked Rei's look of confusion. The man was awfully cute; all visions aside, his handsome face and daunting size made him stand out in a crowd, to say nothing of his heritage. Ayar’s eyelids drooped a bit, and he curled his hands beneath his chin. “You can tell me about them, if you like...or just let me pick out my favorites.”

The nervous grin popped back up. Rei bowed his head to obscure it. At the same time, his hands drifted to the inside of his bag, searching, shuffling. Didn’t need his eyes. He would know it when he felt it. And then he felt it: that dry, almost wooden stem. The flower hadn’t wilted much, although he’d picked it to grind it into a poultice, not to present it to a stranger, or anyone for that matter. The base of each petal was purple, but the color faded out closer to the edges. He set it on the table and pushed it forward. Though he wanted desperately to speak its name, it would get no further than the tip of his tongue.

“This is lovely,” Ayar said, letting his hands hover above the blossom. “May I put it in my hair?”

“Er…”

“Or would you like to accompany me to my room? Perhaps it would be easier for you to tell me more in private.”

“Yes.”

Ayar raised an eyebrow. “To which question?”

The Au Ra stood. He towered over the table and the golden-eyed man sitting on the other side. For an instant, he considered leaving the tavern in shame. He had done it before, had come to a fork in the road and walked backwards. But he wouldn’t do it this time. He was too old. Maybe the tea was spiked. “My name is Rei.”

Ayar closed his eyes. When he opened them back up, his grin had grown three times in size. He stood and still had to crane his neck to properly make eye contact. “Well, Rei. It is so very excellent to meet you.”


End file.
